How is post-punk marked by notions of genre identity and distinction? And how did public perceptions of these markers emerge and change over time? These are two of the central questions Haddon asks in her study What is Post-Punk? Genre and Identity in Avant-Garde Popular Music, 1977–82. As a tool of communication, genre permeates discussions about music and often plays a crucial role for ways in which new creative processes are made sense of. Music critics utilise genre as a means of purveying specific sets of associations to their readers and in the process steer genre discourses in specific directions, which in turn affect canons. Discourse analytical approaches are therefore nowadays common practice in genre studies on popular music, and Haddon's detailed account on post-punk not only presents a valuable contribution in terms of its subject matter, but also offers methodological insights that foster a stronger awareness of historiographic research contexts.

Building on extensive media research and paying specific attention to the distinctions between labels such as punk, new wave and avant-garde, Haddon carefully reconstructs the beginnings of post-punk and questions its generic boundaries, showing how the category came to be defined in the music press and by audiences in terms of stylistic hybridity. Haddon puts particular emphasis on the role of critical media discourses in establishing genre narratives. The analysis follows a trajectory of discursive themes that have formed discussions about post-punk. The book benefits immensely from its consistent double focus and comparison of historical and retroactive critical readings of post-punk in the press, which illuminate in detail how generic impressions can shift or solidify over time. Five comprehensive chapters explore the rich identity politics, genre transgressions and boundaries, stylistic nuances and aesthetics of various musical groupings that are nowadays frequently positioned within the post-punk realm. Throughout the chapters, Haddon explores post-punk as a flexible discursive network that is adjacent to and borrows from other genres, and that includes a wide array of what critics describe as ‘experimental’ elements. Addressing these stylistics and the influence of sounds from categories such as punk, dub and disco on post-punk, the book asks whether post-punk can be considered a genre in its own right, and examines how post-punk functions in terms of generic connotations.

By tracing the historical emergence of post-punk discourses and inherent negotiations of generic meaning, Haddon illustrates how the category is, on the one hand, defined in opposition to other genres. On the other hand, she shows how it is shaped by several themes that permeate critical discussions giving rise to a catalogue of perceived genre characteristics, which she goes on to explore. Analyses of music by bands such as Wire, The Fall, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Pere Ubu serve to emphasise post-punk's distinction from punk and new wave, with a focus on notions of sonic experimentalism. At the same time, Haddon points out that post-punk's beginnings were shaped by identity politics amplified by the press, that fostered an ideological dichotomy between the ‘radical’ and ‘progressive’ and more ‘traditional’ sounds (p. 54f.).

What is Post-Punk? addresses elements of stylistic diversity and otherness in post-punk. Looking at post-punk's interactions with dub-reggae, Haddon posits that post-punk's borrowings from other genres distinguish it from its generic neighbours. She discusses interactions between predominantly white post-punk artists and dub-reggae as a type of black music that allowed for localised forms of identification and was hence seen as a more appropriate form of cross-cultural appropriation by post-punk musicians (p. 73). The analysis follows the musical and political implications of dub elements in music by groups such as Joy Division and Durutti Column, but significantly also considers dub works to show how borrowed stylistics were utilised for the creation of alternative and utopian sonic spaces that form genre identities. Haddon concludes that dub elements served as a form of cultural capital to ‘revivify’ post-punk and suggests a positioning of both categories in a site of competing experimentalisms (p. 76 f.).

The variety of themes covered in Haddon's analysis underlines the book's central argument that post-punk emerged as a complex network of generic associations and debates. A discussion of disco as a further social Other explores significations of white masculinity in post-punk against historical assumptions and stereotypes about blackness, queerness and the mainstream that permeate early discourses (p. 19). Building on an analysis of PiL's ‘Death Disco’, Haddon examines the incorporation of disco grooves into post-punk music and demonstrates how the joining of disco's physical attributes with punk's aggression led to the development of a new physicality and perceptions of the male body informed by several social and psychological disturbances (p. 99). A compelling argument is also made in a discussion of women musicians in post-punk. Analysing music by the Slits, the Raincoats, Lora Logic and Siouxsie and the Banshees, Haddon questions academic discourses that consider post-punk as a space for women owing to its celebration of amateur aesthetics and suggests instead that female performances of amateurism can be read as ways of resisting the co-option of the female body and voice (p. 129f.). Focusing again on genre discourses Haddon highlights numerous instances in which female post-punk musicians still dealt with criticism and humiliation, noting that, in post-punk, femininity might have served as yet another element of distinction or subversion (p. 131). Examining discourses on post-punk's industrial aesthetics, Haddon goes on to explore the prevalence of genre interpretations that focus on local genre connotations in relation to ‘avant-garde’ and notions of ‘newness’.

Concluding her arguments with a return to the etymological debates surrounding the term ‘post’ in post-punk, Haddon suggests that post-punk allows the questioning of ‘punk's shortcomings, and turn[s] toward music that offers a corrective to such shortcomings’ (p. 161). A major strength of Haddon's study is the fact that she emphasises valuable alternative insights into common discourses, and continuously encourages the questioning of established narratives with a particular focus on receptive changes. The book will therefore be of particular interest not only to scholars of punk and post-punk, but also to future genre research.